The Chronicles of Q'barra

After the shadows slowly relinquished Whitecliff at daybreak, you rested for several hours. Grimbold comes to see you early in the afternoon. “I heard about your defense of the armory,” he begins. “That was well done, my friends. I was at the chapel last night. We lost a number of people to those skeletons. It’s strange. The skeletons we fought were dressed in the cassocks of monks. Brother Zelan thinks they came from the crypts at the old Argent Fist Monastery.”

After taking a brief rest from clearing the main floor of Vontarin’s ruined mansion, the heroes proceed to see what is behind the door at the bottom of the stairs.

Opening the door, our heroes find themselves in a dank, dark storage area. Fortunately, the bard fires up a sunrod, allowing the party to bypass a trap at the base of the stairs. The room is clearly being used for storage, and the party spots a way out.

Moving further into these underground chambers, the party learns that Vontarin had expanded a storage area into a storage area – family crypt – menagerie – research laboratory. The party also learns that the scales they dealt with above are only half their problem. They dispatch the rest of the problem with relative ease, and finding no trace of Nathaire/Vontarin, they head back to Whitecliff.

Arriving just before sunset, the party finds many of the villagers seeking shelter in the church and nearby armory. Marshal Grimbold asks if they had any luck finding Nathaire, then reports on the happenings around town. A small, shadowy humanoid was seen lurking in the outskirts of town, and Grimbold expects more trouble come nightfall. Can the adventurers help?

The party goes in search of the shadowy humanoid. They find him, hiding in an empty store, and discover that more creatures from the Shadowfell have arrived in town. Attacked on all sides, the party manages to fend off several hounds and spirits, but the shadowy humanoid escapes.

Whitecliff’s long night has finally come to an end. With the arrival of dawn, the town shifted back from the Shadowfell to the world and the party gets a well-earned chance to recover. The question is how long the respite might last, and whether our heroes can unravel the mystery of what has happened here.

Back at the Old Owl, our heroes turned their attention to decoding the journal they found in Evard’s tomb. It took several hours, but they finally realized that the journal, written by the missing Nathaire, revealed that Nathaire was going to resurrect Evard, somehow gaining power from Evard’s soul. The shadowfall must have been related to Nathaire’s ritual in some way.

Then came the visitor. A young boy, maybe 12 years old, had arrived at the Old Owl, looking for our heroes. He had been sent by his grandmother, a Vistiani fortune teller who needed to speak to the party.

The Vistiani revealed that Evard was not buried in Evard’s tomb. Instead, he had killed his rival Vontarin and it was Vontarin’s remains the party had seen in the sarcophagus. Nathaire’s ritual had resulted in freeing Vontarin’s soul, which had then possessed Nathaire.

A howling outside brings the discussion to an end. A pack of gray wolves, led by a werewolf, and stumbled across the Visitani cabin and attacked. Gloomhollow and Silverthorn were both hurt badly as they exited the house, looking for more room to fight outside. But they remained standing, and as the rest of the party deployed, the tide of battle turned. A lone wolf was soon running off into the woods.

Following Mother Grivaldi’s suggestion, the party headed for the ruins of the Vontarin mansion, guided by the 12-year old grandson. Upon their arrival, they discovered that the mansion was being used by a bunch of lizardfolk raiders. A fight through the rooms of the main floor killed the scales, and the party took a quick rest before the stairs leading down to a door, presumably to some cellars beneath the mansion.

Dolurrh. also called the Shadowfell. is a place of gloom and despair. never brighter than twilight. Within this dark world is the desolate Realm of the Dead. where souls go at the end of life on Eberron. Some say that the ultimate fate of souls is to remain in Dolurrh and fade into the shadows, while others cling to a hope that souls eventually pass beyond the Shadowfell, beyond even the Astral Sea, to the place where the gods reside, Dolurrh is also home to creatures of darkness such as shadar-kai, nightwalkers, and death titans

Clearing out the armory was an excellent first step to helping the folk of Whitecliff make it through the night, but dangerous creatures still roam the streets. Worse yet, panic and despair have descended over the town.

Quickly binding their wounds, the party began a sweep through the streets of Whitecliff. They eventually drove a pack of dusk beasts ahead of them and cornered the beasts back near the armory. A brief fight ensued, and our heroes managed to eradicate the beasts, along with a Dark One that had slipped into town and was sniping at folks.

As they rested, a runner from the city militia found them and summoned them to the chapel. There, the party met Brother Zelan, who told of people at Evard’s tomb and how the night’s events seemed to originate from the graveyard. Hearing these tidings, the party heroically heads to the cemetery.

Upon arrival, the party is assaulted by ghouls, zombies, and shadows. After fighting off these creatures, the party discovers that someone has broken into Evard’s mausoleum and has pried open his sarcophagus. But his skeleton, wrapped in dark robes, lies there still – apparently undisturbed. The only other thing found is a leather bound journal, written in some kind of code. Dawn is breaking, and the shadowfall ends, allowing Whitecliff to shift back to Eberron. Our heroes gather up the journal and head back to town for a well deserved rest.

Tired after a long day of marching in an unusually cold rain, you’re warming yourselves by the hearth of the Old Owl Inn in the town of Whitecliff. You’ve been travelling though the surrounding terrain for weeks and are now heading south to the city of Newthrone with the collected taxes from the nearby settlements.

When you arrived in Whitecliff, you discovered that the elemental powered riverboat you hoped to take to Newthrone was not functioning. Now you must wait a few days for some House Cannith artificers to finish repairs.

After hanging out in the common room of the inn, our heroes settle down for a nice, dry sleep. In the middle of the night, they wake to a strange sensation, followed by screams coming from the common room. They quickly arm and rush into the common room, only to discover Tilda d’Ghallandra, the inn’s owner, lying unconscious on the floor bar the bar. Overhead, small winged shapes swoop and attack – the carved gargoyles decorating the room have apparently come to life.

As the party battles the animated gargoyles, shadows phase through the inn walls and attempt to merge with the shadows cast by our heroes. Eventually, the party drives off or destroys all the gargoyles and the shadows. Searching about, they realize that a shadowfall has occured and Whitecliff has shifted to the Shadowfell.

Setting out to track a fellow boarder – a scholar who, along with his halfling servant have vanished from the inn – the party comes across Grimbold, town marshall, and a band of armed townsfolk. Quickly discussing the nights events, the party decides to help Grimbold by heading back to Whitehall to help clear the armory. Grimbold sends a couple guardsmen after Remy – the halfling servant who fled. There’s been no sighting of the scholar Nathaire.

Turns out the armory has been overrun with spiders. In the ensuing battle with the spider swarms, Silverthorn proves friendly fire isn’t as he nearly kills Mialee, the elf scout that joined the party this trip. Dude, the half-elf bard, and Gloomwhollow, the shade executioner that also joined this trip, are overcome by spider poison and fall unconscious before the battle ends. But the party prevails, and the armory is freed from the host of spiders.

Having fought their way past Olek’s runebearers, our heroes now discover that neither Olek nor the rune-bound tome are in the library. The clock is ticking as our heroes search frantically for clues as to where Olek has gone.

Trained in the art of rune smithing by the devotees of Onatar, the dwarf runepriest Olek Dael grew horrified by the destruction wrought during the Last War. Olek then had an epiphany – Force employed in service of order and light was far better than rampant chaos and darkness. If people would not listen to reason and work together, civilization must be imposed on them. Over time, Olek began to offer more of his praise to the Traveller.

When a rune-bound tome was brought by a party of adventurers to Newthrone from the Mountainroot Temple, Olek recognized it as a powerful relic from the Age of Demons. He stole the tome, seeking to invoke it’s runic power to summon an army dedicated to change and the creation of a new order of peace.

Olek fled Newthrone with the tome, heading up the Adder river, through Whitecfliff and to a vale nestled in the shadows of the Endworld Mountains. Stopping briefly in Restwell Keep, Olek passed through the King’s Wall and beyond knowledge.

The party is contacted by Vencarlo and Switchblade who explain the situation and hire our heroes to recover the rune-bound tome. The party agrees and heads to Whitecliff on an elemental-powered riverboat. From there, they travel to Restwell Keep on horseback and attempt to pick up Olek’s trail there.

They discover that Olek has holed up in an abandoned dungeon and they leave for it immediately.

As they approach, they are spotted by a medusa acting as look-out as they study the many statues in the area. Our heroes are triumphant in the ensuing battle, but Giberoth is petrified. As the medusa falls, a rune detaches from her body and attaches to the nearby Codren. Codren recalls from this arcane studies that the petrification can be reversed by applying the blood of the dead medusa to Giberoth’s stony lips.

After a short rest, the party discovers nearby stairs leading down to a double metal door – this must be the entrance to the dungeon! Hearing a bubbling sound on the other side, Silverthorn picks the lock and the party enters.

They find themselves in a long hall containing two sarcophagi and a bubbling font of water. Runes cover much of the floor, including a circle near the entrance that has a glowing section. Two minotaurs are visible and are preparing to charge.

Combat ensues and the minotaurs are joined by a hobgoblin. Soon, the minotaurs are dead and the hobgoblin has retreated to the bubbling font. Silverthorn teleports nearby as Codren slays the last minotaur, only to be hit by radiant energy and teleported to the glowing section of the rune circle near the door. He then charges forward again, seeking to skewer the hobgoblin. But as he draws near to the place he was earlier, he is again hit and teleported back to the rune circle. The runic bug zapper gives the party pause, but Codren and Giberoth figure out the operation and the party is able to come to grips with the hobgoblin and slay him. As he falls, a rune detaches from his body and attaches to Giberoth.

As our heroes finish pulling Switchblade and other survivors of the Watch from the rubble of the barracks, word arrives terror attacks taking place throughout Newthrone. Our heroes are urgently needed to deal with one of the threats.

Smoke begins to rise above the rooftops of one of the poorer neighborhoods. Racing ahead of the rest of the party, Silverthorn, Dude, Codren, and Izera find themselves facing a berbalang that is busy dropping clay pots of a flammable substance on the tenements below.